Flawed Victory - The Supreme Court stretches the law to help victims of workplace retaliation

Washington Post ^ | May 29th, 2008 | Editorial

[The_Republican]

THE SUPREME COURT pleased workers this week when it ruled in two cases that employees who suffer retaliation after complaining about discrimination may sue under existing civil rights law. Yet both decisions are deeply flawed and should make those applauding the results more than a little nervous.

In a 7 to 2 vote, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. in the majority, the court concluded that a 19th-century law crafted to protect the legal rights of newly freed slaves also protected Hedrick G. Humphries, an African American associate manager at Cracker Barrel who complained to his boss, a white man, about the discriminatory treatment of an African American waitress. Mr. Humphries was fired soon after and sued Cracker Barrel under the 1866 law, alleging retaliation.

The law has been understood to protect African Americans from employment discrimination, but it makes no mention of retaliation. How, then, could the court and two of its most conservative justices justify giving Mr. Humphries the right to bring a retaliation lawsuit? Because of stare decisis -- a reluctance to overturn prior decisions of the court. The court in 1969 and again in 2005 inferred into law a prohibition against retaliation, concluding that if people were not protected from retaliation, they would be less likely to report discrimination. This makes sense; it's just not what the law says, as Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia pointed out in their dissent. The chief justice, who appeared extremely skeptical of a broad interpretation of the law during oral argument, must have held his nose in deciding to respect established case law in this instance.

In the second case, the court found that the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) gives federal employees the right to sue claiming retaliation.

[subterfuge]

There are those supremes GWB put up as conservatives again, disagreeing with ATCUAL conservatives.

[Redbob]

So: A white man would have no recourse under this new “interpretation”?
(Yes, those are “sarcasm quotes”)

[AuntB]

“his makes sense; it’s just not what the law says, as Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia pointed out in their dissent. “

IMO, these 2 judges are the only thing left to hold this country together.

[teeman8r]

so let it be written, so let it be done.

then rewritten and interpreted to mean what we say.

teeman